Association des Mamans Célibataires pour la paix et le développement (AMC)

About the Organization Contact and Service Areas Successes and Impact Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security Survivor Leadership Understanding Economic Harm in Context

About the Organization

Country

Burundi Rwanda

Number of survivors served in a year

101 to 500

Languages

French

Groups most commonly served

Refugees, migrants, or internally displaced persons Sex workers Women Youth, children, or adolescents

Type of organization

Nonprofit or non-governmental organization (NGO)

Program model(s)

Community-based financial initiatives Holistic crisis response Rights-based economic justice Survivor-centered income generation Systemic change through strategic partnerships Transforming social norms through community-building

Contact and Service Areas

Service Area(s)

Great Lakes Region of Africa (Uganda, DRC, Rwanda, Burundi)

Successes and Impact

“The biggest success that we’ve had is that we spoke about single mothers, we spoke about our conditions, we spoke about our challenges. This required a huge effort on our part . . . [but] truly, this is a success. People are no longer afraid of saying: ‘I am a single mother.’”¹

Association pour les mamans célibataires pour la paix et le développement (AMC) envisions a world free from violence where survivors’ choices and rights are respected. Through a powerful community-based approach, AMC helps foster economic autonomy, healing, and leadership for survivors across multiple countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region, with a particular focus on single mothers and refugee women who often face multiple forms of stigma and discrimination.

Reducing stigma around single motherhood and speaking out about economic abuse

One of the organization’s greatest achievements is making economic violence visible, including within the family unit, and reducing the stigma and internalized shame that single mothers are often subjected to. By openly identifying as single mothers and survivors, the AMC team has encouraged others to speak out about gender-based violence (GBV), including economic violence, and to claim their economic and social rights as single mothers.

Their work has expanded awareness about the economic challenges facing single mothers and survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), creating society-wide momentum evidenced by an increase in the number of new organizations who take on defending, protecting, and expanding single mothers’ rights.

“The success is that it’s being talked about,” AMC states. “This is very important. Everyone [now] realizes that this situation has been ignored, that there is a part of the population [young single mothers] that has been silenced, that has been suffering all forms of violence in silence. There are many other small organizations that are starting to crop up and that are including the issue of single mothers in their programming.”

Changing national policies that hold back survivors—especially single mothers

AMC’s advocacy efforts extend to direct engagement with government officials and policymakers to push for policies that expand the economic opportunities available to survivors—especially young single mothers. This visibility has contributed to national policy changes in Burundi, including modifications to school policies that previously expelled pregnant students permanently. As the organization explains: “Before, girls were kicked out of school definitively [when they became pregnant], but now . . . they can return [to school] one year later.” The opportunity to continue their education as young parents is a crucial piece of creating pathways to survivors’ long-term economic security and social autonomy.

Adapting and expanding programming to other countries in the Great Lakes region

When political instability forced many team members to flee Burundi as refugees, they established new branches in neighboring countries. “We were extremely destabilized when we had to flee the country because we had really established good foundations, but we fled,” they explain. Despite this disruption, the AMC team continued supporting survivors while navigating their own displacement challenges. They found that “being able to help others when you yourself are in trouble is not easy . . . [and] discrimination remains. . . . Victims of violence remain victims anywhere.”

However, this experience gave them extraordinary insight into the realities of other forcibly displaced single mothers who experience IPV. As a result, AMC has been able to adapt their economic programming to address the specific barriers confronting refugee survivors in Uganda and Rwanda. By maintaining flexibility and responding to survivors’ priorities across multiple contexts, they not only ensure their programs remain relevant and effective despite challenging circumstances but also grow their reach and model across borders.

Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security

“It’s a vicious circle. The violence is almost imperceptible. You don’t notice it right away. . . . There will be a lot of stereotyping linked to [women and money] before we realize these women are under financial control and that this is another form of violence that is not perceptible . . . If we talk about Burundi, for example, women don’t have access to land . . . [because] it only belongs to the men.”

About the Program

AMC’s programming addresses the urgent economic needs of single mothers, including refugees, who have been subjected to IPV in different countries of the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

Their work particularly supports young women and single mothers who face extreme stigma and discrimination after experiencing violence, pregnancy, or separation from a harm-doer.

The organization is keenly attuned to the links between economic violence and other forms of GBV. Their comprehensive, survivor-led approach begins with psychosocial support focused on building community and self-esteem. From there, they work with survivors to ensure access to education and sexual and reproductive healthcare and to build practical skills that help them generate income. Lastly, they work at a systemic level to secure women’s access to economic rights, especially land, and to combat stigma and discrimination faced by single mothers.

Program Development and Key Strategies

The organization identified the following strategies as crucial to the success of their programming for single mothers:

Integrating emotional and economic well-being
Taking a holistic and systemic approach to economic rights and autonomy
Maintaining flexibility and adapting to survivors’ priorities

Integrating emotional and economic well-being

AMC recognizes that trauma and economic security are interlinked. Therefore, their program integrates psychosocial and economic strategies. They focus on building survivors’ self-esteem, emphasizing that “when this person’s self-esteem is restored, they can be economically free, because they can work with confidence.”

The organization has found that group and peer settings (e.g., group therapy) are often most effective for bolstering survivors’ confidence, supporting their healing, and growing their economic autonomy. Their success is grounded in the members’ shared identities as single mothers and survivors of violence, which creates authentic connections between program participants and a place to turn to when uncertainties arise.

The organization also realizes that the flip side of this equation is true: “When you have a financial resource, it also boosts your self-confidence.” AMC therefore supports survivors on their journey toward economic autonomy by helping them set up income-generating activities and manage their own finances. The organization provides microcredit or supports survivors in accessing microfinance services, often accompanying survivors to banks to set up accounts and apply for loans. AMC notes that accompaniment is a key element and provides a source of emotional support.

They also offer entrepreneurial skills training, such as sewing and jewelry-making, that survivors can turn into income. As the organization explains, “It is important to set up support and training programs for single mothers so that they can access credit and develop their small businesses. . . . By encouraging [survivor] autonomy and offering economic opportunities, [survivors] can . . . gain economic security within their community.”

Taking a holistic and systemic approach to economic rights and autonomy

AMC recognizes the critical need to transform the legal and cultural landscape that perpetuates women’s economic exclusion. The organization advocates for fundamental economic rights crucial to survivors’ long-term security—especially land rights, since access to land is a cornerstone of economic independence in the region: “The most important thing would be to have access to land. It’s very important because it’s like being able to belong somewhere, having roots.”

AMC’s advocacy challenges discriminatory inheritance practices that exclude women from owning land. They conduct awareness-raising campaigns through social media and community outreach to bring attention to this form of economic violence and the consequences for single mothers, especially those who have been subjected to IPV. This work has influenced other organizations in the region to incorporate support for single mothers in their programs.

Maintaining flexibility and adapting to survivors’ priorities

AMC began as a small listening center for single mothers but found themselves quickly overwhelmed. Being flexible and making changes based on survivors’ emerging needs became a central tenet of their approach: “It wasn’t possible, when we had like a hundred people there. We changed, we organized group conversations, [with around] six people. The group conversations were part of [the program]. Then we talk, we share experiences, we may cry, then laugh—all at once. And we also learn something.”

This adaptability was also evident when the organization’s members became refugees in neighboring countries. They continued to organize in these new contexts, offering economic programming to single mothers that accounted for the intersecting nuances of survivorship and refugee status.

Survivor Leadership

“There’s something special about our organization: most of our members have been single [mothers]. We understand each other. We’ve all been through almost the same thing, maybe on different levels, but we’re all survivors.”

AMC embodies survivor leadership in their structure, with former program participants moving into mentorship and leadership roles. The organization’s staff are themselves single mothers and survivors of IPV and economic abuse. These shared experiences create trust and credibility between organizational leaders and program participants, while also ensuring that the organization’s programming adapts to survivors’ true and evolving needs.

Understanding Economic Harm in Context

The organization’s economic programming addresses the complex ways intimate partner violence and economic abuse intersect with social norms in the Great Lakes Region. Several key factors shape how survivors experience economic harm:

Socio-cultural norms limit survivors’ access to economic resources and autonomy
Restrictive laws and systems infringe on survivors’ economic rights and options
Institutional discrimination compounds economic barriers for single mothers, teenage mothers, and single women
Cycles of violence and displacement make it hard to get ahead

Socio-cultural norms limit survivors’ access to economic resources and autonomy

Normalized patterns of economic control

Economic violence often remains invisible within intimate partner relationships due to deeply embedded social norms. As AMC explains, “This economic violence . . . is a scourge, because it’s not something that can be seen with the naked eye, because of the culture and other practices that surround it. . . . You can’t just see it and understand that it’s one single form of violence, because it goes hand-in-hand with so many other forms of violence. You’re not going to say, ‘My husband stole my money.’ No one will listen.”

The organization has observed how economic control operates even within well-intentioned support programs. When organizations provide financial assistance directly to women without also addressing underlying norms of economic control in relationships, “their husbands take [the funds], because they’re supposed to be the heads of the household.” This reality has informed the organization’s approach of creating intentional accompaniment around normalized patterns of economic control, in which they work with survivors to rebuild their self-esteem and challenge the idea that women cannot earn or keep their own money. When this psychosocial support is paired with entrepreneurship support, survivors are equipped to both earn income and maintain control of their finances.

Women face discrimination when pursuing economic autonomy

Young women face particular challenges when pursuing economic independence, especially when trying to sell goods or services in public spaces. The organization notes the double standard: when teenage boys seek employment or try to earn money, they’re praised as resourceful, but when teenage girls do the same, they are judged and criticized for being “always out in the street.” By making these dynamics visible through awareness-raising campaigns where single mothers speak out about their personal experiences of discrimination and violence, AMC helps survivors recognize and challenge these discriminatory patterns.

Restrictive laws and systems infringe on survivors’ economic rights and options

Survivors in the Great Lakes Region must navigate both formal and customary legal systems that often restrict their economic rights.² The organization advocates for reform of customary land practices that exclude women from inheritance, especially since Burundi does not have an official law regarding land inheritance.³ “If there’s a dispute, it’s customary law that comes into play which doesn’t allow women to inherit,” AMC explains. “It’s one of the extraordinary violences we never think about, to be born and grow up in a country, but not have access to land at all. It’s as if you weren’t a citizen of this territory.”

The organization emphasizes that “it’s important to make people aware that everyone has the right to inherit from their parents. . . . There needs to be a law on this, that’s what’s missing.” AMC sees changes to inheritance laws and land rights laws as key to supporting survivors’ economic autonomy and creating pathways to safety for those being subjected to intimate partner or domestic violence. The organization raises awareness about this issue by leveraging their existing visibility within Burundian society to speak to the media about the link between access to land and addressing GBV. AMC contends that without the right to land or inheritance, a survivor “has nowhere else to go.”

Institutional discrimination compounds economic barriers for single mothers, teenage mothers, and single women

Beyond formal and customary law, AMC comments that simple statements by politicians can have direct consequences for single and teenage mothers’ economic security because public institutions may take it as law.⁴ They explain: “A government minister can simply declare that teenage mothers have no right to schooling; or decide that single mothers are not entitled to free healthcare; or a communal administrator can declare a curfew for women.”

Institutional discrimination in healthcare settings as a form of economic violence

In Burundi, programs that aim to reduce maternal and infant mortality, particularly for children under five and women in childbirth, provide free care in public facilities. However, in practice, single mothers are excluded from these programs because access to free care is often conditioned on marital status.⁵ This discrimination, while not permitted by the National Health Policy,⁶ is frequently applied and constitutes a form of economic violence because it deprives single mothers of a fundamental right, making much-needed care unaffordable and endangering their health and that of their children. AMC has denounced this practice on several occasions, calling for immediate reform to guarantee universal access to care in accordance with Burundi’s laws.

Rules related to marital status create financial and safety risks for single mothers

Changing rules and policies around registering children can have additional harmful consequences. AMC explains how a government minister insisted that mothers cannot register children with a “father unknown” status but instead “must absolutely name the fathers of these children.” This approach places responsibility solely on mothers without creating corresponding mechanisms to ensure fathers accept parental responsibilities. It can even place mothers and children at increased risk of further violence, because revealing a father’s name gives the child rights within the father’s family—rights that fathers and their own families may not want to recognize.

Banking systems present additional challenges. “If you go to the bank for a loan as a single woman, they ask where your husband is and ask him to come. If you don’t have a husband, your whole family has to sign for you to be allowed to get a loan.” The organization helps survivors develop strategies to access financial services despite these structural barriers.

Cycles of violence and displacement make it hard to get ahead

As a survivor-led organization, AMC has a deep understanding of how economic dependence and control often mean that survivors are unable to leave harmful relationships or otherwise find safety: “Within our organization and the community, we have observed that victims often stay with their perpetrators because they lack the means to survive financially without them.” They explain that many people in society don’t understand that this is the reason survivors cannot simply leave: “People don’t realize that [marriage is] a way of surviving, because [women] can’t make it without it, because they’re not allowed to.” This cycle often continues through generations: “So many of us have been in the same situation, our mothers and great-grandmothers.”

The organization pays particular attention to how economic violence and vulnerability can increase additional risks of exploitation and harm among refugees. They explain, “When we were refugees in [Rwanda], we had many cases that were just horrible, with young girls who were really exploited, because you’re exploited twice. The precarity of being a refugee, and also the precarity of not having any savings, any money . . . [means] we suffer twice.” AMC draws on team members’ own experiences as refugees to develop programming that addresses these intersecting challenges, supporting survivors to rebuild economic security across national borders.

Notes

Direct quotes are slightly edited for style and flow.
For example, see Atlas Network, “Women’s Land Rights in Burundi: Stepping Into Economic Independence,” accessed September 21, 2025, https://www.atlasnetwork.org/stories/womens-land-rights-in-burundi.
Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development (LANDac), Food Security and Land Governance Fact Sheet: Burundi, Utrecht: LANDac, 2015/2016, https://usercontent.one/wp/www.landgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20160608-Factsheet-Burundi.pdf.
For more information on Burundi’s legal system, see Aimé-Parfait Niyonkuru, “Gender and Access to Justice in Burundi: Conflicting Norms, Gaps in the Law and the Role of Judges,” The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 53, no. 3 (2021), 570–592, https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2021.1981036.
Desire Habonimana and Neha Batura, “Empirical Analysis of Socio-Economic Determinants of Maternal Health Services Utilisation in Burundi,” BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 21, no. 684 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-021-04162-0.
Le Ministère de la Santé Publique et de Lutte contre le Sida [Ministry of Public Health and the Fight Against AIDS], Politique nationale de santé 2016-2025 du Burundi [National Health Policy of Burundi 2016-2025], Gitega: Government of Burundi, January 2016, https://extranet.who.int/countryplanningcycles/sites/default/files/planning_cycle_repository/burundi/pns_2016_2025_burundi.pdf.